Frederic Bastiat Quotes

... to teach the necessity of respect for the rights of persons and property as fundamental to every form of government...to teach the duty of government, to encourage and protect individual and group initiative and enterprise, to foster the right to work, earn, save and acquire property, and to preserve the ownership and lawful use of property when acquired.

Every man has a right by nature to possess property as his own.

Laws form the most important portion of a nation's history.

We need a proper balance between rights and responsibilities in our laws.

Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

Who of us knows or can by possibility arrive at a knowledge of the laws that govern our property and lives?

Moral principles of liberty that endow a person with the right to claim and acquire property at the same time oblige that person to respect every other person’s equal right to do the same.

Law is order, and good law is good order.

Government has no other end but the preservation of property.

The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property; and the end while they choose and authorize a legislature is that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the society, to limit the power and moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society.

Private property is a creature of society, and is subject to the calls of that society, wherever its necessities shall require it…

The third absolute right, inherent in every Englishman, is that of property, which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminution save only by the laws of the land.

The law exists to express our values.

Property is proper to man.

The more advanced nations have laws recognizing the sanctity of property and the protection of person, but international laws and ethics have not kept pace with intra-national laws and ethics.

… since the right of possessing goods privately has been conferred not by man's law, but by nature, public authority cannot abolish it, but can only control its exercise and bring it into conformity with the common weal

From the ownership of women the concept of ownership extends itself to include the products of their industry, and so there arises the ownership of things as well as of persons.

A relation is formed betwixt every man and the fruits of his own labour, the very thing we call property, which he himself is sensible of, and of which every other is equally sensible. Yours and mine are terms in all languages, familiar among savages, and understood even by children. This is a fact, which every human creature can testify.

The man-made laws have been made by men who have not perceived the final goal towards which they are making. And that is why it is so important to insist upon the final thing first, and then all the regulations, all the disciplines, will follow.

There is no such thing as absolute free speech; there are only absolute rights of private property. Speech is circumscribed by private property rights. You may deliver a disquisition in my virtual or actual living room only if I permit you to so do.

Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.

In a world of private property, if something isn't owned by somebody, it's going to be misused by somebody else.

Without property rights, no other rights are possible.

Law is the ultimate science.